Students at Towson University in Maryland want school officials to remove the names of two “racist” slave-owning politicians from campus buildings, according to an online petition.
The group of students — who call themselves “Tigers for Justice” — want dormitories dedicated in honor of William Paca and Charles Carroll to be renamed due to their notorious, well-documented pasts, a Change.org petition states.
“Both of these families built their wealth off of the enslavement, abuse and forced labor of African American people, and Towson is deciding to celebrate Charles Carroll and William Paca by naming a building after them,” the petition reads. “Is this what Towson stands for?
More than 3,700 people had signed the call to rename Paca House and Carroll Hall as of Friday.
Paca and Carroll — both of whom signed the Declaration of Independence — did each own slaves, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Carroll, who died in 1832, was one of the state’s first two US senators and later served as president of the Maryland Senate. He was considered one of the largest slaveholders of his time, retired state archivist Edward Papenfuse told the newspaper.
Paca, Maryland’s third governor, who later became a federal judge, had an estimated eight to 13 slaves prior to his death in 1799. He pushed for slavery to be abolished at one point, but never freed his servants — something not entirely unusual at the time, Papenfuse said.
“They deserve to be remembered not for their faults but for their achievements,” Papenfuse wrote in an email to the newspaper. “Paca, for instance, was one of the fathers of the Bill of Rights, while Carroll was willing to put his whole extensive fortune on the line in opposition to authoritarian rule.”
But two Towson students who are part of the group said they were unmoved by those accomplishments.
“These [buildings] are named after slave owners,” student Jordan Smith told the newspaper. “We should get this changed immediately. Even as a resident, why would I, as a black person, why would I want to live under the name of someone who was a slave owner?”
Sarah Fishkind, who is white, echoed Smith’s take, saying it’s unacceptable that Towson named the dorms after people who built fortunes off the “black bodies” they enslaved.
“We shouldn’t celebrate the people who owned slaves,” Fishkind told the Sun.
In a statement to The Post, the school said, “Towson University understands that concerns have been raised by some of students regarding the names, Paca and Carroll, two of the university’s residence halls. Those residence halls were named in 2008 and 2015, respectively.
“In 2017, the university determined that there was a need to establish a policy as well as an inclusive, transparent process for naming administrative, academic and residential buildings on TU’s campus.
“A university-wide committee was formed in that year, comprised of faculty, staff and students, to develop the policy that is currently in effect and details the process for the naming, withdrawal or renaming of a building on the university’s campus.”
As of Friday, the statement added, “the university has not received any requests, as described in the policy, for the withdrawal or renaming of Carroll Hall or Paca House.”
Dedicating or renaming any building at a public university in Maryland like Towson cannot occur without approval from the University System of Maryland Board of Regents, a spokesman told the newspaper.
In 2015, the board voted to change the name of Byrd Stadium at the University of Maryland in College Park. Harry C. “Curley” Byrd, the stadium’s namesake, had opposed admitting black students before a 1936 court order forced the university to do so, the Sun reports.